Today is NATIONAL FLUFFERNUTTER DAY!!!
A childhood favorite… and we can consider this as “carbo-loading,” right?!

My friends Keith & Julie recently moved for central Illinois to Ohio… and it looks like they finally got around to unboxing some of their pottery collection! What better way to “feel at home” than with a freshly-baked pineapple upside-down cake, fresh-cut roses from the garden & the warmth of a candle… and some of my stamped pottery to pull it all together!

This week in my Intermediate Wheelthrowing class, one of my students continued her “quest” for the perfect doughnut… oversized, wheelthrown & frosted with colored slip! Kelly made one last session and it turned into a vase with a bite out of it for the flower hole. Can’t wait to see where these go… although I keep telling her that I’ll take a full Baker’s Dozen please!!!

When the kiln door is finally unbricked, it’s always nice to take a step back, take a deep breath & admire the work for a second. Appreciating that the firing was a success… that I got some good colors throughout the kiln, and NOT a ton of blasted grayness! Enough admiring… now it’s time to start unloading layer by layer, shelf by shelf, pot by pot…

We had a surprise guest in my beginning pottery class Tuesday night! Nick came into class with a black duffel bag asking where he could stash it somewhere quite & clean. We put it under the wedging table… only after finding out that there was a four-week old puppy inside!!! My student Nick is a veterinarian and was at the vet clinic when someone found this cutie abandoned on the side of the road and brought him in. We all loved it… and told Nick that we now expect a different puppy in class each week!!! HA!!!

Looks like a beautiful breakfast in the making in Stevens Point. Flowers from the garden, a beautiful fruit salad and plenty of pottery to serve in style! Remember, homemade food always tastes better in handmade pottery!

It’s great to see some of the purchases from last weekend’s NORTHERN ILLINOIS POTTERY TOUR. Like this great grouping… it looks like Rhonda did some shopping in Sandwich with Cory, Kenyon, Linda & me! And even better… it looks like she’s already putting them to use!

In Cory’s front yard, she has a little garden “graveyard” of broken pottery… and it’s an “honor” to be included in her graveyard collection! Even if my stamped & soda-fired bowl is only there to prop-up Steven Hill’s cracked platter?! ha…

I “behaved” the whole weekend… until I saw Kenyon’s cups and I just had to have one!!! I think I must have touched them all at least twelve times… narrowing it down slowly… until I finally decided that THIS ONE was the one that “had to” come home with me! Crazy cool design, patterns, glazes & soda-fired effects. Well done Kenyon… and THANK YOU!!! It was great hanging with you guys all weekend in Sandwich!

Whimsical illustrations with kind of a groovy retro vibe by Nancy Gardner…another one of the potters at the Sandwich location of the NORTHERN ILLINOIS POTTERY TOUR.